Riccione, a beach town south of Bologna, spent two days as a rainy ghost town – and then the sun came out and so did everything else. The big day on the bikes ran sixty kilometres inland through the hills, hilltop castles as checkpoints, one real climb, and a casual pedal home with a fresh sunburn earned honestly after six months of Vancouver winter.
Then Imola. A small town where nobody speaks English and everybody speaks Formula 1 – four hours early, pizza inside what felt like an amusement park, beer by the token, and cars moving faster than the eyes wanted to process. A wet track, an upset result, and Italians in full voice. Saturday night back in Riccione, the whole town finally awake.